


all for our country

by mitzvahmelting



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: 2012 season, Daddy Kink, Enthusiastic Consent, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Slurs, Washington Nationals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 10:06:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16303115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitzvahmelting/pseuds/mitzvahmelting
Summary: “You get yourself all worked up, huh,” Zim says. “Everything snowballs in your head until you show up at my door in the middle of an argument that I was never a part of.”





	all for our country

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ryanzimmerman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryanzimmerman/gifts).



> a lil fic for the baseball boi with the hottest takes

“It’s not weird,” Bryce blurts out as soon as Zim opens the hotel room door. “I don’t want you to think it’s weird.”

Then he shoulders past Zim into the room. “Well, hello to you, too,” Zim mutters, shutting and locking the door behind Bryce.

The kid’s wearing a hoodie, to make sure no one spots him sneaking around the hotel and into his teammate’s suite. The L.A. paps are ruthless, and that’s before you even factor in Bryce’s rookie reputation, or the six-pack of beer under his arm. (He’s nineteen years old, and he should _know_ better than to carry alcohol in public.)

The beers thump down on the coffee table. Bryce is still standing, with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed and a nervous energy keeping his shoulders tight. “It’s _not_ weird,” he says again.

“I never said it was weird,” Zim reminds him. “You can sit, you know.”

“You’re judging me.”

“I’m not judging you.”

“You think I’m a fag.”

“I _definitely_ don’t think – Harp, come on, you know I wouldn’t—”

But Bryce isn’t listening. He jams a finger at Zim, “You know, people _do_ this a lot, alright? It’s not – it doesn’t _mean_ anything, it’s just a thing people say during sex sometimes.”

“I know.”

“I’m not some, some kid with some kind of _fucked up_ home life, alright? My parents are _great,_ my family is – nobody ever _touched me—”_

“Jesus _Christ,_ ” Zim interjects, grabs Bryce’s shoulder and slams a hand shut over his mouth. “Will you stop talking for two seconds?”

In a classic little-brother move, Bryce reflexively presses the tip of his tongue against the palm of Zim’s hand and Zim flinches, pulls away in disgust. “Really?” he demands, shaking his hand out to get rid of the slimy feeling.

At least he stopped talking, though. Bryce looks a little lost, like he didn’t expect himself to do that and now he doesn’t know what to say.

Kid hardly ever knows what to say, really. No filter. “Sit down,” Zim tells him, and Bryce sits on the couch. His hands start curling into fists in his lap, and he’s staring at the floor, but at least he’s quiet. Keeps glancing up at the beers, though, like he can’t decide if he wants to have one, or if he wants to run.

Zim takes a deep breath.

They haven’t fucked yet, they’ve just necked a bit in private corners of the clubhouse, or while watching bad television in Zim’s hotel rooms. Zim hadn’t meant for things to go even _that_ far – Bryce is just a _kid,_ and totally immature to boot. Of course Zim hadn’t been trying to get with hm. He was just trying to extend a basic courtesy, show the new guy the ropes, be his friend. Suddenly he got a lapful of horny teenager one night, and…

Bryce is fragile. Barely handling the stress of the majors. Unmoored and inexperienced. Zim didn’t want to reject him outright, he’d be _shattered_ and… Zim just figured, okay, we mess around a bit and then he gets bored of me, moves on with someone better for him, everything turns out alright.

Last night, a tipsy Bryce whispered _“Daddy, please…”_ against Zim’s shoulder, and Zim chuckled warmly at the neediness and tried not to draw attention to it, but Bryce caught himself, somehow realized he’d said that out loud. His whole body went stiff. Scrambled out of Zim’s lap and out the door, wouldn’t respond to texts.

“You get yourself all worked up, huh,” Zim says. “Everything snowballs in your head until you show up at my door in the middle of an argument that I was never a part of.”

“I saw the way you looked at me in the dugout today,” Bryce mutters bitterly, staring at the floor. “The expression on your face.”

“ _What_ expression?” he demands, “I wasn’t looking at you any sort of way, Harp, I’m just _worried_ about you.”

“I—” Bryce starts, but he cuts himself off. He doesn’t say anything else, he just puts on a scowl and studies his sneakers.

Alright. Zim lets out a slow breath and settles into the armchair. He picks up the remote and mutes the television. The room goes silent, then, but for the buzz of the electricity, and the way Bryce’s shoes whisper against the floor as he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Can we talk about this?” Zim offers, gently.

Bryce nods, wordlessly, without meeting his gaze.

Zim’s only known the kid for a few months. His body looks big and awkward in the hotel couch. Maybe he feels like he doesn’t fit in his skin, maybe he doesn’t know how he got here or what he’s doing.

When Zim joined the majors, at least he had basic life experiences under his belt. He knew who he was. He knew he liked men. It wasn’t… wasn’t a crisis. Wasn’t something that felt dark or scary – at least not by the time he was an adult, with gay friends and an accepting community.

“Look,” Zim says, softly. “Of all the things for you to be into, pal, this is… squarely inside the bell curve. It’s not weird.”

Bryce kind of deflates, at this. His head lowers, his eyes shut.

“The fact that you got so _defensive_ about it, that’s a little weird, but—”

“I swear,” Bryce cuts in, “there’s nothing—it’s just something I picked up from porn, it’s not—”

“I don’t care,” Zim tells him. “If you’re telling the truth, fine, no big deal, I’m not judging.”

“I’m telling the truth—”

“But even if you’re not, even if there’s something more going on, I really… it’s not my business, okay? I don’t care.”

“No!” Bryce shouts, far too loudly for this time of night, “No, you can’t think of me like—I’m telling you the truth, okay, there’s nothing wrong with me!”

He’s getting too worked up again and Zim just wants to placate him, keep him from waking up the neighboring rooms. “Okay!” he says, holding his hands out plaintively, “Okay.”

Bryce screws his eyes shut, tugs at his hair. From here, Zim thinks it looks like it hurts. “Fuck,” Bryce says, “this is exactly what I didn’t want to happen. I really didn’t want you to make a big deal out of this.”

“I’m not making a big deal of anything.”

“You’re looking at me like I’m messed up, like you’re sorry for me, even though nothing _happened_ it’s just you’re making – you’re making _assumptions,_ Zim—”

“Oh my God,” Zim groans in frustration, glances fruitlessly up at the ceiling. Enough of this, he just needs to get Bryce to chill out. He reaches over to the coffee table, pulls a beer from the cardboard crate, and pops it open. Shoves it at Bryce.

After a moment’s hesitation, Bryce smirks and takes the bottle. “Thought you had hang-ups about this.”

“I have hang-ups about a lot of things with you. Drink your beer.”

 

Bryce does unwind a bit with the drink. Maybe not because of the alcohol itself, but the physical motion of pulling the bottle to his lips – it takes a certain posture that isn’t otherwise conducive to anxious brooding. Zim waits until the tension melts out of Bryce. Kid’s eyelids start to droop a bit, and he’s leaning back against the couch cushions. The athletic shorts ride up a bit on his thighs and Zim doesn’t bother trying not to look; he’s seen it all before. The muscle mass, the relaxed and unselfconscious posture.

Eventually, Zim asks, “Are you going to calmly explain to me why this is so important to you?”

Zim isn’t drinking his own beer. He did open one, but it sits on the coaster untouched. He wants to stay clearheaded. He wants to be able to unravel whatever this knot is in Bryce’s head.

Bryce puts both hands around his bottle, and scratches at the label with his thumbnail. “I know I’m not… normal.”

“Not straight?”

“Yeah.” He crosses his arms around himself, holding the bottle under his elbow. “A thing like that makes people look at your family differently. Implicates them, in the… the perversion. And that’s before you start calling men ‘Daddy.’”

Zim rubs a hand over his face as he takes this in. Sometimes he forgets how lucky he was to go to college, meet good people who set his head right about this sort of thing. Meanwhile Harper’s from, what, Nevada? Blue-collar Nevada Mormons?

“So just ‘cause I’m like… this… it doesn’t mean there was anything they did to make me turn out this way. Not their fault. That’s all, that’s what I wanna make sure you understand.”

“Okay,” Zim chokes out, because he’s unsure how to respond to this.

Bryce nods, satisfied. “Okay.”

It’s one of the few things Zim learned about Harper the first week he met him. Kid loves his family, loves his parents and his brother more than _anything._ More than anything.

“You know…” Zim starts, searching for the words, “this was never going to make me look at you or your family any differently. But now I suspect you might have been making assumptions about _my_ background, huh?”

“What?” Bryce looks at him sideways. “No.”

“You think there’s some _reason_ that I’m gay? Was I ‘normal’ and then something ‘perverted’ me?”

And the kid has the audacity to huff and look away uncomfortably. “I don’t know,” he says, “maybe?”

“God, this is…” Zim laughs, rubs his temples with his fingers, “this is heartbreaking, buddy.”

It is, it really is. Because Zim knows Bryce’s trajectory, left high school early for the college leagues, left college early for the minors, then the majors a year later. The only constant in the kid’s social life was his family and his childhood home. Who could have helped him? Who could have broadened his horizons, taught him that it was okay not to hate himself?

“Kid, this is… this is normal, too, you know? You can have sex with men, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Bryce rolls his eyes. _“Ryan,”_ he says, like a warning. “Don’t give me the whole _‘don’t kill yourself’_ speech, I’m not buying that soft bullshit.”

“I’m not – what? What are you talking about?”

The kid growls, “I’m not freaking out about it, alright? It’s – it’s a vice, I’ve come to terms with it. Like. I’m not supposed to be drinking, either. But I’m not _ashamed_ , not gonna shoot myself. You don’t have to tell me – I _know_ it’s normal, I know people do it all the time, and in porn, and… and someday I’ll give it up and repent for it, it’s fine.”

“Okay…” Zim twists his mouth, “okay, okay hold on a second. Listen.”

Bryce watches him, skeptically.

“So,” Zim explains, “for me, and for a whole lot of other people, there’s nothing wrong with being gay, having sex with men, whatever. Having sex with men, with women, loving people, it’s fine, it’s all good. We don’t see anything wrong with drinking alcohol, either, as long as you’re safe about it, as long as you don’t hurt yourself or other people.”

Zim crosses his arms tight against himself as he speaks, trying to sound eloquent, trying to make sense, because he feels the weight of Bryce’s wellbeing on his shoulders, like it’s his _responsibility_ to get this right, or at least not scare Bryce away. “See,” he says softly, “what _we_ think is most important is to be _good_ to other people, to be kind to others and to ourselves. We think that’s how you be a good person. Doesn’t matter who you have sex with, as long as you’re not hurting anyone, as long as you’re being kind and loving to other people.”

Bryce looks away – his voice is kind of emotionless when he says, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” says Zim. “So… so if it’s important to you, to think of this as a vice, a perversion, that’s… that’s fine. That’s not my business. But I want you to understand that… that _I_ don’t think it’s wrong, and a lot of other people agree with me. And if you decide someday that you don’t _want_ to feel guilty anymore, for something that makes you feel good and doesn’t hurt anyone… then we can talk about that, too. Even if you don’t want to talk about it right now.”

He doesn’t turn to face Zim. He’s still looking away. At least the tension doesn’t come back, at least the anxious energy from before is still banished. “Yeah,” Bryce says softly, “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

 

He doesn’t leave, though, and Zim is a little thankful for that. Bryce just stays there on the couch for a time, staring at nothing. He drinks the last of his beer in the quiet.

Zim starts to relax again, watching Bryce in the television glow, helplessly wondering what’s going on in the kid’s head. Eventually, he decides to break the silence himself, a bit raspy when he says, “You know, you could still call me Daddy, if you want.”

Bryce’s head whips around, wide eyes lock on Zim.

“I mean,” Zim clarifies, “I don’t mind it, if that’s what you’re into, if that’s what gets you hot. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t,” Bryce repeats, firmly. “It _doesn’t_ mean anything.”

“But it gets you hot, doesn’t it?” Zim knows he’s treading on thin ice with this one, but something about the way Bryce is looking at him… he chances it, letting his voice drop low and sultry. He taps his thigh. “You wanna sit with Daddy?”

There’s a brief little panic in Bryce’s eyes, a blush blooming across his cheeks. “ _Fuck,_ Zim,” he mumbles.

“Our secret, babe.”

Evidently that’s enough to get Bryce off the couch, get him to slide on top of Zim’s lap, straddle his hips in the wide armchair. The kid is heavy, warm, breath tinged with beer, lips shining wet. And when Zim gets a hand behind him to support his back, he feels the arch of Bryce’s spine, his perfect posture. “Good boy…” Zim whispers, and that makes Bryce whine, tuck his face against Zim’s neck. His nose is a little cold, there.

Zim strokes his back, kisses his hair absently. Doesn’t say anything to protest, when Bryce starts rutting against his stomach. Gets a hand on the kid’s ass to help him out with that.

And it’s not… it’s not bad, like this. Zim gets hard for it, sure. He’s not too picky to begin with, and… well, Bryce is just something, isn’t he? Just something else.

Zim won’t push for anything with him. Let Bryce decide what he wants from Zim and how much of it. Let Bryce set the pace and the tone and the boundaries. Zim will just give him what he wants, no more than that. Keep the kid safe, and warm, and welcome. That’s what really matters.

And maybe Zim fantasizes sometimes about what it’d be like to fuck that cute little ass, but he’s not going to do anything about it. This is good enough, this right here. Short puffs of breath against his collarbone, the whine of the kid’s voice, a whispered, tentative, “Daddy…”

Zim squeezes his ass, digs in his fingers, gets Bryce to whimper and buck forward, rut more forcefully against Zim’s hip. “I’m right here,” Zim tells him. Pulls back a bit to find Bryce’s bottom lip, kiss him wetly. “I’m right here.”

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on [my tumblr](http://mitzvahmelting.tumblr.com)


End file.
